Wednesday, June 28, 2017

I
eagerly looked forward to this one-day conference held at Queen Margaret
University in Edinburgh on 22 June 2017.
I have been working on transnational audiences, and am currently
researching into how the meaning of the disputed term fidelity has become
contested in recent years with the move towards globalized approaches to
adaptation.

Jeremy
Strong (U. of West London)began the event with a lively presentation on French heritage cinema of
the late twentieth century and its influence on the British media. The images
of a prelapsarian world full of country lanes, with the people going home at
sunset after a day on the farm were seductive – so seductive, in fact, that
they formed the basis for well-known commercials such as that promoted by
Stella Artois. Strong also drew
attention to the success of Peter Mayle’s A
Year in Provence, which fueled the British public’s dream of getting away
from it all in France. The television
version, while not a success, is a good example of spectacle television,
designed to promote tourist images of the area.
Strong argued persuasively that this form of cinema was not realistic,
but formed part of a psychogeography dedicated to attracting a large fan
base. This psychogeography was childlike
as well as attractive, fulfilling dreams – perhaps nostalgic, perhaps
aspirational. Cultural specificities
were not significant; these dreams were transnational including familiar
conventions of sunsets, wistful music, countrified people and their animals.

Michael
Lawrence’s (U. of Sussex)piece on the Bollywood version of Wuthering Heights took up the transnational theme. Released in 1966 under the title Dil Diya Dard Liya, it starred Dilip
Kumar, a mainstay of Bollywood, and ran for 169 minutes. The film incorporates familiar melodramatic conventions
of love, marriage, heroism and villainy, interspersed with frequent musical
interludes. The script was built round
Kumar’s star image, with emotions worn on the sleeve. The film was successfully exported to Russia
and other areas but remained unknown to the majority of Western audiences. The links between Bollywood and the local
Turkish industry Yeşilçam are
palpable: the recasting of Western classics according to local conventions; the
use of music to enhance the films’ emotional effect; and the building of the
action round a genuinely local star.

Chi
Yun Shin’s (Sheffield Hallam U.)work on The Handmaiden
(2016) the Korean reboot of Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith
(2002), followed a similar methodological path.
The Korean reboot is much more explicit than the source-text, and
transposes the action from Victorian England to Korea under Japanese colonial
rule. I think the Korean film is more of
a reboot than a remake, as director Park Chan-wook makes no attempt to rework
the novel but provides his own particular riff on the material. Local considerations take priority over
global issues. I’d like to have seen some
discussion of Aisling Walsh’s television adaptation of the Waters novel (2005),
especially the relationship of the neo-Victorian ambiance to Park’s use of
settings, both of which differ significantly from the novel. An article on this subject by Eda İpek Gündüz (Gaziantep U.) will appear in a forthcoming anthology on Value
in Adaptation, forthcoming from McFarland.

Carol
Poole’s (Edge Hill U.) paper on the various versions of War and Peace, including that of
Bondarchuk (1966) and the recent BBC version by Tom Harper (1966). Being pedantic, I’d I have liked a reference
or two to the 1956 version by King Vidotr with Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn,
not to mention the famous 1972 television scripted by Jack Pulman with Anthony
Hopkins in the lead. What was perhaps
most evident from Poole’s piece was the elasticity of the source-test; it doesn’t
really matter about fidelity issues as the screenwriters reshape the material
according to culture-specific concerns.
I use the term “culture-specific” rather than “national”: as Poole
persuasively averred, it’s time to approach adaptation from as post-national
standpoint, taking into account the audiences’ inclinations. We all have our favorite adaptations of the
novel, shaped by our ages, background and relationships. Michael Stewart (Queen Margaret U.) argued persuasively that
Alice Munro’s short story “Silence” (2004), transformed into Almodóvar’s Julieta (2016), was in a sense
unadaptable. Following Jeremy Strong’s
argument about the imaginative constructions of Provence, Stewart believed that
Almodóvar enacted his own vision of Canada, a world of darkness and
threat. The source-text provides a
source of inspiration for an idiosyncratic idea of nationhood that tells us
more about the director’s imagination than Munro’s writing. Historical issues – as constructed through
the sets and costumes, for instance – assume a secondary role. Stewart’s piece reminds us to approach each
text on its own merits rather than applying a prearranged framework shaped by
our previous knowledge of adaptation.
The same also applies to Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013): Robert Munro (Queen Margaret U.) argued that the director
emptied the Glasgow setting of any local significance, and thereby prompting us
to reflect on humanity’s relationship to the environment – maybe even the
ecosphere? Perhaps there is further opportunities for the exploration of the
film from an eco-critical angle.

Another
piece by Douglas McNaughton (U. of Brighton) concentrated on Scottish films. McNaughton considered T2: Trainspotting (2017) as an updating of the first film, released
in 1996. The comparison reminded us of
the effect of time on our perceptions: the later version of Trainspotting offered a sentimental view
of the first film, with the once-young protagonists having to cope with the
confines of middle age – a double-edged sword if there ever was one. McNaughton’s piece also confirmed about how
perceptions of adaptations change over time: I remember viewing the premiere of
the first film, when some members of the audience visibly recoiled at some of
the grislier sequences (especially those set in a urinal). Now the roseate glow of nostalgia hangs over
that material, as we look back to a pre-Brexit world whose inhabitants enjoyed
a freedom of self-expression denied to them now.

The
conference also offered a series of reflections on the concept of value. Picking up on Stewart’s piece, Sarah Artt (Edinburgh Napier U.)argued whether there had been any successful adaptations of Jean Rhys’
novels. The answer is very much a matter
of opinion – especially if radio adaptations and/or readings are taken into
account – but Artt’s piece revealed the intrinsic role played by audiences in
the adaptive act. How they react to
particular films tell us a lot about their aesthetic preoccupations, and what
they expect from the idea of “nation” and “nationalism.” They are in perpetual dialogue with the
cinema and television producers and directors looking to make profits on their
investments. Shelley Galpin’s (U. of York)piece on Far
From the Madding Crowd (2015), which she freely admitted was her favorite
adaptation of the novel. Participants
from a different generation begged to differ, preferring John Schlesinger’s
1967 version instead. We could also
bring Nicholas Renton’s 1988 television version into the discussion. What is perhaps more instructive is that
fidelity issues in this discussion are very much shaped by individual
preferences, which are in turn shaped by social background, age and cinematic
experience. Adaptation is not simply
focused on textual issues, but needs to take ethnographical issues into
account. The same also applied to
Victoria Lowe’s (U. of Manchester) discussion of the British New Wave films of the late Fifties
and Sixties. The generic term “British
New Wave” is contested; likewise our opinion of the films produced around that
time and the impact they made on British film history. As Lowe spoke, I kept thinking of the recent BBC
Radio 4 season, also entitled the “British New Wave,” which overlooked the
films’ theatrical origins altogether.
Yet I don’t think such differences are a matter for dispute – they simply
indicate the ways in which perceptions depend on a variety of factors,
personal, industrial as well as cultural.

What
I found most enlightening about the whole seminar is the way in which apparently
disparate cultural products are linked transhistorically as well as
transnationally. It is up to adaptation
scholars to unpick those links that tell us a lot about the way people react to
individual films as well as learning more about how and why such films are
produced. Strictly formal procedures,
such as the relationship between source and target-texts, have been supplanted
in the adaptation studies’ agenda by a concentration on conditions of
production and reception and how they have changed over time and space. There are far more opportunities for
constructive dialogue between adaptation scholars with different research
interests – dialogue that will tell us more about transnational flows.

This
is an exciting time for adaptation studies; and it is a testament to the
quality of the papers delivered at the Edinburgh event that this sense of
excitement throughout the whole day. Thanks are due to the co-organizers of this event, Michael Stewart and Robert Munro, as well as the participants for a memorable event.

Sunday, June 4, 2017

As
a veteran attendee of conferences over the last quarter century, I have become
accustomed to a series of familiar rituals.
The speakers gather round a table on the podium or speaking area, and
one by one they deliver their papers, invariably accompanied these days by
PowerPoint presentations of variable quality.
Sometimes the slides bear very little relationship to the arguments
presented; on other occasions presenters copy their entire paper on to the
slides, forcing the audience to wonder why they are speaking at all. We could readily discover what their topic
might be through reading the slides.

Nine
days ago I delivered a piece in Thessaloniki, Greece, on the audience’s role in
adaptation. I planned it roughly
according to a paper I had recently completed on a similar topic. I would begin with an explanation of the
popular appeal of Yeşilçam films in
Sixties and Seventies Turkey, concentrating in particular on the symbiotic
relationship established between performers, producers, and their
audiences. I would then survey the
changes in the Turkish film industry in the Nineties, when Yeşilçam died out and the television serial, or dizi, dominated the ratings on public
service as well as private broadcasting.
I would finish with a survey of attitudes in various countries towards
the diziler, which have proved both
financially as well as popularly successful.
I had spent several hours putting together a PowerPoint presentation
which I hoped would not fall into the kind of methodological traps I have
previously described (https://www.slideshare.net/laurenceraw/literacies-and-transnational-audiemces).

I
was due to speak at 13.30. I went to the
morning sessions, secure in the knowledge that I had prepared my presentation
and could answer questions on it. As the
session unfolded, however, it became increasingly clear that other
presentations were focusing on subjects resembling mine. A Portuguese colleague offered a fascinating
insight into the early days of the local film industry, where the combination of censorship
and capitalism led to an idiosyncratic product very similar in terms of content
and form to Yeşilçam. Another presenter, this time from Greece,
looked at the contemporary reception of Bill Haley’s film Rock Around the Clock (1956), and its potential for generating “moral
panics” (as far as the media were concerned, that is). Precisely the same thing had occurred in the
Turkish film industry, especially when films dealt with family and marital issues.

I
began to write furiously while the other presentations were delivered. I decided to ditch much of what I had
previously prepared and restructure my presentation around the relationship
between industry, performers and audience.
Following Simone Murray’s arguments, I wanted to show how the form of a Yeşilçam drama did not depend so much on
the screenwriter, nor on textual issues such as fidelity, but rather on what
the audiences expected. Hence the
fondness for recycling familiar melodramatic plots centering on good and
evil. I followed that with the piece on
audience reaction to the diziler
outside Turkey, to show how audiences in different territories constructed
different evaluations of the same material, both in informal conversations and
online discussion groups. I ended up by
calling for more systematic studies of the role of audience, especially in a digitized
world where local and global issues were often inseparable.

The
only snag was that I had to present this spontaneously with the minimum of
notes to work from. The traditional
props of the conference speaker – the PowerPoint presentation and the
elaborately worded written lecture – were unavailable to me. As my therapist once memorably said, I had to
“fly by the seat of my pants.”

I
underestimated the resilience of the human spirit in such situations. I talked to the audience as if I was talking
to friends in a teashop, keeping my tone conversational, and returning
periodically to my main themes (adaptation and industry, audience studied) to
aid comprehension. Subconsciously I felt
my head moving from right to left, trying to make sure I looked at every one of
the audience, even though they seemed somewhat blurred (I was wearing my
reading rather than my distance eyeglasses).
As I warmed to my theme, idea after idea came to my mind; I could
readily quote the previous presenters’ work on Portuguese films to suggest
transnationality). Conclusions have
always been my bugbear, but in this presentation the ending appeared perfectly
logical: we need to expand our frame of reference in adaptation studies to
include nonwestern cinemas and their histories.

I
felt good at the end. For someone who experiences problems of self-esteem,
especially with the deterioration in my voice, this was particularly
gratifying. Only the week before the BBC
rang me to make a comment in one of their film programs, but decided not to use
my owing to my croaky voice that was not suitable for the airwaves. Even though the producer denied it fervently,
I understood that he was not telling the truth.
No matter: in Thessaloniki I had dealt with my fears and spoken to the
best of my ability.

There
is no real moral to this story, other than to suggest that adaptation studies
bears an intimate relationship to individual psychology. Sometimes you need to adapt yourself to the
exigencies of an unforeseen situation.
The experience can prove stressful, but the results highly beneficial.